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“Just because they say it,” his eyes tell me, “doesn’t mean we have to listen.”

I smile in response. He’s right.

19

NOW

I lie in bed waiting for the sound of his footfall against the wood, for the sigh of the mattress as his knee sinks into it. When he arrives, I’ll tell him to leave. I will. Even if it’s the last thing I want to do.

But I fall asleep waiting, and when the bed sighs and his weight is above me, I’m somehow unable to form the words I need to form. I want him to stop and I don’t want him to stop, and it’s only as my eyes fly open that I realize I’m alone.

I’m relieved and I’m empty, all at the same time.

For two days and two nights we avoid each other, and by the third night I’m praying for the sound of his feet. All night I dream of the floorboards creaking as he approaches, the rasp of his breath as he comes. I wake each day with my body on fire, the sheets twisted between my legs, devastated that he isn’t coming back to me.

I’m angry at him for making me want him this way, and desperate for the sight of him anyhow.

Donna smiles when I walk into the kitchen. “He’s surfing.” I guess it’s obvious I was looking for him. “You know our boy. He can’t stay away from the water for long.”

Tears sting as I turn away from her. I don’t know how she can say those words after what happened to Danny. If I were her, I’d have moved as far from the ocean as possible, trying to forget, trying to pretend it doesn’t exist. How can she drive down the coastal road without remembering? Because I can’t.

“I think I’ll take over painting the garage,” I tell her.

“You sure, hon? I don’t like you on that tall ladder.”

I laugh. “But you didn’t argue with Luke on that ladder, did you?”

She waves a hand at me. “He’s Luke.”

Because if that ladder fell, he’d grab onto a gutter and swing himself Tarzan-style to safety, or somehow ride the ladder as it descended and roll away at the last moment. He does things you wouldn’t imagine were possible until you witnessed them yourself.

“I’ll be fine,” I tell her. “If you had to be a world-class athlete to climb a ladder, there’d be a lot of unpainted houses.”

I go outside and gather supplies from the garage. I bang my shin simply by carrying the ladder, and the paint’s so heavy that I have an angry red line across my palm by the time I’ve gotten it across the yard.

Then I climb, and all that cockiness with Donna dies a quick death.

It requires a surprising degree of coordination to climb a ladder while carrying a heavy can of paint in one hand and a brush and paint pan in the other. When I finally make it, sloppily pouring paint into the tray, I nearly dump the whole pan onto the ground and barely catch it. I begin with too much paint on the brush and as it drips down the wall, I sigh heavily. Goddammit, Luke. Why do you make everything look so easy?

It takes about twenty minutes to relax and find my rhythm, to decide I sort of enjoy the mindlessness of painting. The temperature outside is perfect—the sun warm on my arms, the breeze cool. I picture Luke out on the water right now, jogging his board forward to increase his speed as he cuts through the waves, making every trick look ridiculously easy to the dumb kids watching.

Thoughts of him are normally painful, but for some reason this one isn’t. I picture him happy, and my mind allows itself to empty at last. I start humming and I know that it will eventually be a song about him—most of mine are—but it’s been a while since I’ve felt so alive in the creation. It doesn’t feel distant, for once.

The slam of the screen door knocks me from my reverie. I jolt, dropping the paint brush. The ladder rocks as I reach for it, the paint can above me wobbles, and suddenly I’m no longer on the ladder at all, but flying backward toward the ground.

Somehow, though, I land safely in Luke’s arms, his body tight around mine as he absorbs the blow. I land on top of him, blinking in shock.

His breath is on my neck and my heart is pounding at twice its normal rate. I know it was an accident and yet it somehow feels like I wanted it to happen. Like my subconscious did it on purpose.

He runs a hand over my back. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” I exhale shakily. “Thanks.”

He releases me and I clumsily right myself and climb off him.

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Jesus Christ, Juliet. You could have broken your back. Let me handle the climbing from now on.” His chest rises and falls rapidly, like he just finished a sprint.

Luke, who’s never scared, was scared for me.